Monday, October 03, 2011

Bank Tank

48 comments:

I was watching to see when the banks would bottom out before starting to inch back into that sector.

That inclination was stopped over the past week or so when Jamie Diamond, CEO of JP Morgan and hero of the boys/girls at CNBC, charged that increased bank holding requirements coming out of Basil III and pushed by the US were "Un-American". He insists they will hurt America when in fact he means they will hurt him and his cronies at the bank.

With Bank of America how appropriate is it that their recent decline started at the same time they instituted a new 5% charge for using debit cards in order to recover their losses on the backs of their customers.

Compare the aimless Wall Street protesters with the folksy savvy of the Tea Party. The Tea Party was started by ordinary folks who hate the corporations just as much as they hate the government. They have experienced the nightmare of foreclosure, or of a chain store opening across the street and killing their trade. They know that the bailout was driven by financial lobbyists, and they hate every congressman who voted for it. They are what the novelist Chilton Williamson once called, “Country and Western Marxists”. What differentiates them from the Wall Street protesters is culture. They are recognisably American in their ideals and appearance. And they get that the American people don’t want to see the free market curtailed by yet another social democratic contract. Best of all, the Tea Party won’t take to the streets to get what they want. They understand that the path to reform of Wall Street begins at the ballot box. The Tea Party represents an American vision of the future. The Wall Street protesters are a horrible reminder of its past mistakes.

...Internal company documents show that the company made those sales through foreign subsidiaries, thwarting a U.S. trade ban. Koch Industries units have also rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly run afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada.

From 1999 through 2003, Koch Industries was assessed more than $400 million in fines, penalties and judgments. In December 1999, a civil jury found that Koch Industries had taken oil it didn’t pay for from federal land by mismeasuring the amount of crude it was extracting. Koch paid a $25 million settlement to the U.S.

Phil Dubose, a Koch employee who testified against the company said he and his colleagues were shown by their managers how to steal and cheat -- using techniques they called the Koch Method...

Over the weekend, Perry said that while the country must brace for a difficult conversation about reining in the cost of Social Security, he has no plans as president to cut into the benefits of current seniors or those near the age of retirement.

On immigration, Perry touted his stand against issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, his support of a requirement that voters present a picture identification before they can cast ballots, and his support for a “sanctuary cities” bill in Texas that would freeze state funding to local governments that bar law enforcement from inquiring about the legal status of detainees.

“No one up there on that stage has a stronger record than I do when it comes to illegal immigration,” Perry told a rain-soaked crowd in Manchester on Saturday.

This page has a list of all individuals running for U.S. President in 2012 who have filed statements of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.

It includes the following who have filed as Libertarians:

Roger Gary

R.J. Harris

Carl Person

Lee Wrights

The following are Bylaws Sustaining Members of the national Libertarian Party and have announced their intention to run for U.S. President in 2012, but have not filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.

“Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few … No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” (James Madison)

“The War on Drugs is a price support system for terrorists and drug pushers. It turns ordinary, cheap plants like marijuana and poppies into fantastically lucrative black market products. Without the War on Drugs, the financial engine that fuels terrorist organizations would sputter to a halt.”

The Libertarian Party has announced it will hold it’s 2012 national convention in Las Vegas to pick it’s presidential nominee.The Libertarian Party is the nation’s third-largest political party. About 250,000voters are registered as Libertarians. There are 152 Libertarians elected to public office and about 300 more in appointive positions.Las Vegas beat out San Francisco and Dallas to host the event.They will meet May 4-6 at the Red Rock Resort.

“If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check.”

RJ Harris Liberty Team collected nearly 400 signatures on an afternoon at a Oklahoma Sooner football game. RJ Harris and his team had a great time tailgating with fans of the #1 Ranked NCAA Football Team in the Nation.

A loose-knit populist campaign that started on Wall Street three weeks ago has spread to dozens of cities across the country, with protesters camped out in Los Angeles near City Hall, assembled before the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago and marching through downtown Boston to rally against corporate greed, unemployment and the role of financial institutions in the economic crisis.

Publicity surrounding the recent arrests of hundreds in New York, near Wall Street and on the Brooklyn Bridge, has only energized the campaign. This week, new rallies and in some cases urban encampments are planned for cities as disparate as Memphis, Tenn.; Hilo, Hawaii; Minneapolis; Baltimore; and McAllen, Tex., according to Occupy Together, an unofficial hub for the protests that lists dozens of coming demonstrations, including some in Europe and Japan.

In the nation’s capital, an Occupy D.C. movement began on Saturday, with plans to join forces on Thursday with a similar anticorporate and antiwar group, October 2011, for an encampment in a park near the White House.

About 100 mostly younger people, down from 400 over the weekend, were camped outside Los Angeles City Hall on Monday morning. Several dozen tents occupied the lawn along with a free-food station and a media center

The monetary system is not working,” he said. “The banks are here to steal from us. Everybody is in debt whether it’s medical bills or school or loans. People are getting fed up with it.”

In Chicago on Monday morning, about a dozen people outside the Federal Reserve Bank sat on the ground or lay in sleeping bags, surrounded by protest signs and hampers filled with donated food and blankets. The demonstrators, who have been in Chicago since Sept. 24, said they had collected so much food that they started giving the surplus to homeless people.

Each evening, the number of protesters swells as people come from school or work, and the group marches to Michigan Avenue.

“We all have different ideas about what this means, stopping corporate greed,” said Paul Bucklaw, 45. “For me, it’s about the banks.”

Ferdaus was arrested by federal agents last week, ensnared in a lengthy sting operation in which the defendant thought he was communicating with Al Qaeda operatives. He was arrested after the FBI provided him with 25-pounds of C4 explosives.

...

A U.S. citizen, Ferdaus graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in physics in 2008 and was living with his parents at their suburban Boston home. His father, Showket, and mother, Ana, were in court along with several other family members.

In a strange twist, Ahmed Mehanna, the father of Tarek Mehanna, a 27-year-old Sudbury, Mass., man also accused of plotting a terror attack, sat with the Ferdaus family.

WASHINGTON, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Monday took aim at one of China's core economic policies, voting to move forward with a bill designed to press Beijing to let its currency rise in value in the hope of creating U.S. jobs.

Senators voted 79-19 to open a week of Senate debate on the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011, which would allow the U.S. government to slap countervailing duties on products from countries found to be subsidizing their exports by undervaluing their currencies.

The procedural vote sets the stage for a battle between lawmakers who say the bill will return to the United States many jobs lost to China and critics who warn it could spark a trade war and will fail to help American workers.

You may be ready for football, but ESPN is not ready to let Hank Williams Jr. open tonight’s game after his incendiary comment about President Obama on Fox News.

The country singer criticized the president’s recent “golf summit” with Republican House Speaker John Boehner. The singer told Fox & Friends that the meeting “would be like Hitler playing golf with [Israeli leader] Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Williams’ voice is famously used to open Monday Night Football, asking viewers “are you ready for some football?” ESPN released this statement:

“While Hank Williams, Jr. is not an ESPN employee, we recognize that he is closely linked to our company through the open to Monday Night Football. We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result we have decided to pull the open from tonight’s telecast.”

"He was in a great deal of agony and he was covered in blood," Dr. Gino Barbacci told the Daily Mail. "He said that he had used his bare hands to gouge out his eye balls after hearing voices telling him to do so - to do something like that requires super human strength."

Father Lorenzo Tanganelli said he had just launched into his sermon when he saw a commotion in the back of the church, according to the Italian paper Corriere Fiorentino.

"This man at the back of the knave started tearing at his face and I realized he was gouging out his eyes," Tanganelli told the paper. "I called for assistance and the paramedics were quickly at the scene and he was taken away and then I carried on celebrating Mass but a lot of people had left because they were so shocked by what they had seen."

The Bible's Gospel of St. Matthew quotes Jesus telling his disciples: 'If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell."

"I'm very much looking forward to seeing Congress debate this bill, pass it, get it to my desk," Obama said. "Ultimately, they've got to do the right thing for the American people."

In a statement, Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck pushed back on Obama's suggestion that Congress is delaying taking action to stimulate job growth.

"As we've long said, we'd like to work with the President where we can find common ground, as well as discuss other ideas that will better support job creation," Buck said. "In the meantime, we continue to pass jobs bills, including two regulatory reform bills scheduled for this week that have bipartisan support."

Government Motors sold 723 Volts in Sept. Barry is as good at funding cars as he is funding his greenie corps. Obama is "intimidated" meeting Lady Gaga. Yeah, that's the guy I want standing up against Putin, Hu, and Ahmadinejad.

“If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check.”

Thomas Jefferson

I presume you cited that quote from Jefferson because you agree with it. Ironic in that it is 180 degrees from the Libertarian position which you've also claimed to admire.

Obama’s approval rating — while not significantly different from a month ago — is at a new career low, his disapproval number at a new high. In all, 42 percent approve of the job he is doing, while 54 percent disapprove.

...

Of course, the president won’t have to run against a theoretical Republican. Among registered voters, he runs neck and neck with Romney, Perry and Christie.

The president has a narrow edge on Perry among all adults. Cain was not tested in a hypothetical contest against Obama.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he wants to bring ex-Soviet states into a "Eurasian Union" in an article which outlined his first foreign policy initiative as he prepares to return to the Kremlin as the country's next president.Putin said the new union would build on an existing Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan which from next year will remove all barriers to trade, capital and labor movement between the three countries.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.